The Great Gatsby read-along - with Stephen Colbert!!! (and me)

Bibliohubby and I adore Stephen Colbert. We tape the Colbert Report every night and watch it religiously after Iggy has gone to bed. We complain loudly when he takes a break and the show is put on brief hiatus (we don't begrudge him his holidays, of course not, we just miss him terribly while he's away).  When we planned our last trip to New York, Bibliohubby spent months in advance of our touch-down hunting tickets to the show, and was ultimately - yay! - successful. So along we went, and came away even more impressed by his near-faultless live performance. The man is a genius.

(Also, we are convinced that if he could only meet us and get to know us a little, he would feel as strongly about us as we do about him and we would all become the best of friends and regularly invite each other over for dinner.)

We seriously considered asking him to become Iggy's godfather. Because, you know, he would definitely go for that, even though he's never met us personally and we live on the other side of the world. He just seems like such an all-round good guy, as well as sharing our political persuasions and being crack-up hilarious. Our favourite ever Colbert moment is what we like to call the Munchma Quchi moment. YouTube it, now. You'll see.

Anyway, my fandom only increased when he announced a reading challenge the other night (ostensibly as part of the inauguration of the O Colbert Book Club - a spoof on Oprah's book club). Viewers are encouraged to read The Great Gatsby before his show on 9 May, when he will be hosting Jennifer Egan (!!) and Baz Luhrmann to discuss the text, in anticipation of the launch of the movie.

Huzzah!

Anyone who started reading this blog at the beginning of the year, when it first started, and has stuck with it since (I'm not sure anyone exists who fits this description; if there is - Hello, you fool, I love you!) may remember that re-reading The Great Gatsby was one of my early goals for 2013. And now here we are; yet another reason to get to it. Also, since writing the first draft of this post I have discovered that The Great Gatsby is also The Guardian's May book club pick.

So I'm inviting all of you to join me. Or join Colbert. Or The Guardian. Whatever. Just read the book, watch the show, and then come back here* and tell me what you think / thought of Egan and Luhrmann and Colbert, and what you thought of the book. Fun!

* It occurs to me that there is a high likelihood that no one will take me up on this challenge. Unlike Colbert, I do not have an established fan base. But I will be discussing the book and the show anyway, so you may as well drop by to read that, in early May-ish. Assuming the birth of Baby hasn't thrown everything dramatically off-course by then, which it may well do seeing as today is the due date.